Free Deadly Is the Night by Dusty Richards Page A

kids, and get back up there.”
    â€œNo. I’ll pay for the wagon, harness, and team. You just make sure you get a good one. You will need it for supplies anyway. Buy an army wall tent and what you need to set up a camp for living quarters. Keep me informed how things go.”
    Spencer shook his hand. “Thanks, I can do that.”
    â€œBreakfast is ready,” Monica announced.
    â€œWe’re coming.”
    They ate breakfast and Spencer left for town to close things up.
    â€œWhat did he find out?” Liz asked when she came down to join him.
    â€œPermission to go get a widow woman from Diablo and marry her.”
    â€œSo soon?”
    â€œI think he already knew the last one wouldn’t stay with him.”
    â€œRebecca sounded very much undecided about staying with him or going somewhere else when we talked.” Liz shook her head in disappointment.
    Chet agreed and hugged her. “He has his own life to live.”
    She agreed.
    Late in the afternoon a man on a weary horse reined up at the barns and told one of the stable boys that he needed to talk to Chet Byrnes. A youth ran to the house and told Monica a man was there to talk to the patron . Monica took the boy to the living room, where Chet was finishing the books.
    â€œYou know this man?” he asked the boy.
    He shook his head.
    â€œI better go see who he is.”
    Monica frowned. “I’d wear a gun.”
    â€œI can do that.” He strapped on his gun belt from the hook, put on a jumper against the cool air, and went outside.
    The man, in his rather shabby dressed appearance, got up and came over. “My name is Harry Olson. You never heard of me I bet, but I’ve heard of you, Mr. Byrnes, and I rode up here to see if you could help me.”
    â€œWhat sort of a problem do you have, sir?”
    â€œMy wife Marcella was kidnapped by some outlaws. I reported it to the law and they said she’d probably run off with them.”
    â€œWhere do you live?”
    â€œMaricopa County. Between Hayden’s Mill and Mesa.”
    â€œThe law told you that?” Chet could hardly believe a lawman would do that.
    â€œA deputy sheriff told me that when I said I knew someone had kidnapped my wife. I know it was a kidnapping because the neighbors heard her screaming that day and then she was gone. They told me so. She’d’ve never left me on purpose. She was kidnapped.”
    â€œAny idea who they were?”
    â€œIf I had, I would have gone after her myself. Instead I rode up here.”
    â€œYou eaten anything lately?”
    â€œSome jerky.”
    â€œCome with me.” He went up the porch stairs, making sure the man was following him.
    At the door he stopped. “Aw, Mr. Byrnes, I can’t come into your house.”
    Monica was standing in the kitchen doorway, blocking it, watching.
    â€œCome on, Monica. Harry has not eaten a meal in the long ride up here. Fix him some food. Please?”
    â€œWhat?”
    Chet was hanging up his gun belt and jumper in the hall. “Anything you have.”
    â€œBreakfast?”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œI didn’t—” Harry started to say.
    Chet sat him down at the table. “I don’t know what we can find out about your wife’s kidnapping, but we could go down and try to investigate her disappearance.”
    â€œI’d sure appreciate it. I heard you rounded up many criminals, and they said you lived up here. It was a further piece than what folks said it would be, but a man on the road pointed your place out to me.”
    â€œYou farm down there?”
    â€œI do, sir. I raise hawgs. Fatten shoats and butcher them and I smoke some hams. Lots of Mexican people live around me and buy my meat. No big business but we don’t starve.”
    â€œHow old is your wife?”
    â€œEighteen.”
    â€œYou been married for a long time?”
    â€œNo, sir. About six months. Marcella has been a great wife and